


With Our Shadows Twisted

by ghostwriterofthemachine



Series: tethered and bound [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Communication, Elements of Brainwashing, Emotional Fallout, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kinda, Magic, Miscommunication, Mutually Non-Consensual Power Dynamics, Slavery, Suicide Attempt, Supernatural Elements, again kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 22:33:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13820844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostwriterofthemachine/pseuds/ghostwriterofthemachine
Summary: Tim opened his eyes, and could feel what was missing. He didn’t even get a second to not remember, between consciousness and not. He felt, simultaneously, too heavy and too light.Tim sat up, looked around. He was in the Cave, in a medical bed, hooked up to a heart monitor. It beeped steadily. It spiked suddenly as Tim’s hands flew up to his face, tracing its contours, desperate in a way he couldn’t really explain.“Shit, you’re awake.” Jason rounded the corner and stopped short. “Fuck, I’ll get-”“A mirror,” Tim demanded hoarsely.Or: Tim and Damian try to cope. It's slow going.





	With Our Shadows Twisted

**Author's Note:**

> Why the fuck did it take me so long to put this out?? The answer to that is that I'm the fucking worst. 
> 
> I wrote half of this, got stuck, fell out of the fandom for a hot minute, got back into it, wrote some more, got stuck, got distracted, got stuck, got distracted, wrote a bunch of other things, got stuck, then finally kicked myself into actually fucking finishing it. During all that there was life getting life-y and work and school and more work and more school. So I'm really sorry that it took me over a year to get this dumb thing out, but I hope it's at least a little worth the wait.

Tim opened his eyes, and could feel what was missing. He didn’t even get a second to not remember, between consciousness and not. He felt, simultaneously, too heavy and too light.

 

Tim sat up, looked around. He was in the Cave, in a medical bed, hooked up to a heart monitor. It beeped steadily. It spiked suddenly as Tim’s hands flew up to his face, tracing its contours, desperate in a way he couldn’t really explain. 

 

“Shit, you’re awake.” Jason rounded the corner and stopped short. “Fuck, I’ll get-”

 

“A mirror,” Tim demanded hoarsely. 

 

Jason looked slightly taken aback. “What?” 

 

“Get me a mirror, Jason,” Tim said again. “Please.” His voice broke, and normally he would be mortified by that, but he didn’t have the energy to care. 

 

“Okay, okay, give me a second.” Jason vanished again, and came back less than a minute later with a hand mirror. It took all of Tim’s self-control not to snatch it. 

 

His own face blinked at him from the glass. His ears had rounded out again, his eyes had cleared. The only thing that seemed to have changed was the texture of his hair. It was thinner and more scratchy than it should be, like dandelion fluff. Everything else looked as it had before the injection Ra’s gave him. 

 

Except the markings that now encircled his wrists, but Tim was resolutely Not Looking at those right now. 

 

“How long was I out?” he asked, setting the mirror aside. 

 

Jason leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “A day and change. You had Dick scared, Replacement.”  _ You scared me too _ , he didn’t say. 

 

Tim nodded. “Is Bruce here?”

 

“No. Still off-world with the League. We tried to call him back, but-”

 

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Tim said. Jason snorted, an odd kind of understanding passing between  them. 

 

This thing, this god-awful  _ situation  _ that neither one of them had vocalized yet, was already going to be hard enough to deal with without Bruce’s particular brand of worry and hovering. Even if, somewhere deep in each one of their four chests, something was pleading for an adult ( _ a dad _ ) to wave his hand and make it better. 

 

Not that it would happen that way, but some child-impulses never really die. 

 

“Jason?” Dick rounded the corner, wearing sweatpants and an over-large red hoodie. Damian was on his heels. “Alfred made lunch, you should come upstairs and-”

 

He stopped when he saw Tim sitting up. Damian peeked out behind him. A smile brightened up Dick’s tired-looking face. “Timmy!” 

 

Tim returned the smile as best as he could. “Hey, Dick,” he said. “Hello, Master.”

 

Tim clapped his hands over his mouth in horror. He heart jumped into his throat and nausea surged. He had not meant to say that. That was  _ not what he had tried to say _ . 

 

Damian stared at Tim like a deer in headlights. Jason was frozen, stone-faced, standing halfway between the two of them and glancing back and forth as if one might explode. All of the color drained from Dick’s face. 

 

“Okay,” he said. He placed the heels of his hands into his eyes and pushed. “Okay.”

 

.

 

“We could just separate them,” Jason offered. All four of them were in various stages of sprawled or perched on the cave’s practice mats. “You take the demon back with you to Bludhaven, at least until we figure this out.”

 

“That won’t work,” said Tim quietly. He had changed from hospital scrubs into a pair of light sweats and a long-sleeved black shirt. It was several sizes too big for him, and might have been Bruce’s. Tim was just happy it covered his arms completely. 

 

(Damian, he noted, was also wearing long sleeves.)

 

“The point of a Binding is to make it impossible for the Creature to leave,” he continued. “If you separate us, something would happen to me.” 

 

Dick bit his lip. “Like what?”

 

Tim shrugged. “Pain? Sickness? Falling into a coma? Hallucinations, like from fear gas?” 

 

The look of vague nausea on Dick’s face, present since Tim woke up, worsened. Damian visibly flinched. 

 

“Forget that idea, then,” said Jason. 

 

Tim rubbed at his eyes. “We need to find out how this thing works.” 

 

“And how do you propose we do that?” Damian snapped, his arms crossed. He didn’t make eye contact with any of them. 

 

“Simple.” Tim pushed off the wall and walked to the middle of the mats. He pretended that his heart wasn’t pounding like a bass drum. “We test it.” 

 

The other three stared at him.

 

He looked at Damian. “Master,” he said, his mouth once again forming the word without his consent, “tell me to do something.”

 

Damian stared at him, almost blankly, until a ghost of his usual scowl touched his lips.”Don’t call me master,” he said. It was barely above a whisper.

 

Tim began to say something, then paused. The irresistible compulsion was gone. “...Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay, Damian, I won’t.” 

 

An hour later, and they had some rules figured out.

 

If Damian ordered something, Tim was helpless to do anything but obey. If Damian  _ suggested  _ something (said, “I would like it if you sat down,” instead of “Sit down, Drake”), there was less of a compulsion, but still a drag under Tim’s skin to do what he was told. He could resist it, though.

 

Damian couldn’t order anything impossible, either in the general sense (“Fly,” or “Run as fast as the Flash”) or the specific-to-Tim sense (“Recite the first paragraph of  _ Il Principe _ in its original Italian” received a pause, then muttered reply that he didn’t know the Italian, but he might be able to paraphrase the English). 

 

Jason threw his hands in the air, hiding his unease with exasperation. “Look, stop me if this is a stupid question, but can’t you just order him to not follow orders?”

 

All four of them paused, looked at each other. 

 

“Drake,” said Damian, “do not do anything that I say.”

 

Tim stared back at him. The runes on his wrists itched. 

 

Damian paused again, licked his lips. “Punch Todd in the face.”

It was a good thing that Jason was very, very good at blocking headshots. 

 

Dick placed his head in his hands once again. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

 

.

 

That night, Tim had nightmares, and Ra’s stalked through all of them. 

 

He dreamed of a tall, broad body looming behind him, hot breath in his ear, an amused mummer of “Kneel, Timothy,” that he was helpless to obey. 

 

He looked up into that dark, angular face set with deep, ancient eyes, and he call it his Master. 

 

Tim dreamed of his own face twisting into something unknown and alien, the unfeeling Fae pushed forward, his humanity being eaten by the same unknown serum that had brought his Blood to the surface. 

 

He dreamed of swords being pushed into his forcibly-willing hand, his body being turned towards Dick, limp and prone, in pain, staring at him with the particular softness in his eyes that came after the words “little brother” fell off his lips. 

 

A whispered order:  _ kill _ . 

 

The blood of his family tacky on his hands.

 

_ Don’t move _ rendering him powerless as chaos swept around him. Ra’s pressed up behind him and ran awful, gentle fingers over his arms and hips. Breath on his neck. 

 

And then Ra’s morphed into Damian, who slunk around him until they looked each other in the eyes and whispered “ _ leave Gotham and never return. _ ”

 

Tim bolted awake in the middle of the night, heart racing and eyes burning. He was hyper-aware of the runes on his wrists. He knew that he couldn’t really feel them. The had no more weight than a tattoo. But he could swear he could feel them throbbing. 

 

Tim got out of bed. He made himself a pot of coffee, got out his laptop, and prepared for a long few hours. 

 

A few rooms over, Damian sat, equally awake

 

.

Over the next week, all four of them called in every even remotely magical contact they had to look at the runes burned into the two youngest Robins. Every single one of them was baffled. 

 

Zatana looked stricken and upset, and very apologetically said that she had never seen anything remotely like them before. Doctor Fate took one look, unhelpfully muttered something about ‘ _ very old, very forbidden magic _ ,’ and left without saying anything else. A Fae outlaw who ran a flower shop, and sometimes doubled checked Lore for Tim, took one look at them, slapped Damian across the face, and ran out of the room crying. 

 

The only person who was remotely helpful was John Constantine, who studied the runes intently for a several minutes, took pictures on his camera phone, wrote down some notes, and assured them that he would be in touch. 

 

“Guess we’re stuck like this, then,” said Tim, deceptively casual. He hadn’t worn anything but long sleeves since he got back. “At least for the time being.”

 

Dick looked like he was going to vibrate out of his skin. “There must be something-”

 

“There isn’t,” Tim interrupted, “at least not right now. We have more important things to worry about.”

 

“You  _ are  _ important,” Dick snapped, folding his arms over his chest. He looked seconds away from stamping his foot.

 

Tim said, “I know that,” even as something small, ugly and and tumor-like in the back of his head gleefully sang  _ you’re not, you’re not, you are Lesser, you are Under, you are a Creature here to serve _ . Tim used everything he had to force it down and force it silent. 

 

“I know that, but I’m not the  _ only  _ important thing.”

 

(Damian lurked on the outside of these conversations, sometimes cradling his cheek as if he could still feel the Fae girl’s slap there, silent and staring and restless.)

 

.

 

It was impossible to ignore. Tim wished that he could, he wished that more than anything, but the Bindings sat over all of them like a blanket of lead. 

 

Dick constantly seconds away from vibrating out of his skin. Jason actually stuck around for more than an afternoon- he even filled a drawer in one of the manor’s guest rooms. Damian was quiet and even more stone-faced than usual. He barely spoke to anyone, even Dick, and his lips were chewed chapped.

 

Tim might have noticed these things if he weren’t so constantly, viscerally tired. 

 

Damian went to school on a Monday. Three hours into the day, Tim felt something like a lightning strike made of white-hot needles hit his spine and twist. He had endured gunshots that hurt less. When it was happening, he would have sworn that losing his father hurt less. 

 

He screamed so loud the windows of the manor rattled, then went nearly catatonic on the couch until Damian was retrieved from school. Until Damian’s small hands touched his face like a baptism. 

 

Or, at least, that was they told Tim. Tim didn’t remember any of it. 

 

What Tim did remember was the aftermath, the little tumor-instinct that urged him to fall to his knees and beg his Master’s forgiveness, push into his Master’s hands and convince him that he could be so good that he would never have to use that pain to make him behave again.

 

Tim spends the rest of the day in his room, blinds drawn and lights off and wearing three layers of sleeves, trying to meditate away that feeling.

 

The next day, Damian Wayne was pulled out of Gotham Academy for a leave of absence, citing a nasty case of Mono. 

 

They were in Gotham, so there was still crime, and because there was still crime there was still patrol. Patrol turned out to be one of the easiest thing to modify. Damian was simply forbidden from speaking over the Comms unless there was an emergency. He patrolled with Dick more often than not, and when he couldn’t he did his check-ins through a proxy. Just in case. 

 

Not that Damian spoke much, these days. 

 

After one such patrol, all four of them spread over the Cave doing the usual post-patrol chores. Dick running a diagnostic on the batmobile, Tim updating some recent case notes, Jason cleaning his guns, Damian doing inventory of weapons they had lost that night.

 

Damian, counting how many grapple lines they had left, and not taking care of a nasty gash he had taken to the upper shoulder, which is why the argument started in the first place. 

 

“Runt,” Jason said, voice gravelly and domino mask still one, “go sit in medical, I’m going to send Alfie down here to take care of that arm.”

 

Damian didn’t look up from his work. “I do not need assistance, Todd. It’s barely a scratch.”

 

“Then you shouldn’t have any problem with getting it looked at.”

 

Damian still said nothing. He didn’t move towards the first-aid corner of the Cave. He didn’t even look up. 

 

Jason’s jaw tightened. “And what the fuck  _ was  _ that out there anyway, Damian?”

 

“What was  _ what, _ Todd?” 

 

“You were careless.” Jason placed his glock on the table with a  _ click. _ “More than careless; it was like you were looking for places to let the assholes hit you.”

 

Damian lowered his head even farther, knuckles turning white on the table. 

 

“Do we need have a talk about self-preservation? Do you need to speak to Dinah? I know this is a lot, kid, but you need to take care of yourself, not to mention we don’t know what you getting hurt would do to—”

 

“I would be more focused on myself,” Damian snaps, voice sharp, “if I didn’t need to constantly make up for  _ your _ inadequacy,  _ Todd.” _

 

_ “My _ inadequacy?” Jason narrowed his eyes. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

 

Damian sneered. “You fight like a back-alley brawler. You have no finesse, you just throw your bulk around—”

 

“Fucking watch yourself, runt, I’ve had twice as many teachers as you.”

 

“And all of them must have been incredible fools, to pass on even a fraction of that foolishness to you.”

 

Jason got to his feet so fast the chair nearly fell down behind him. He opened his mouth to retaliate, but Tim cut him off. 

 

“Could you guys please cut it out?” he sighed. “I’m trying to finish this before dawn, and the noise isn’t helping.”

 

“Fuck off and die, Timmy,” Jason threw over his shoulders, eyes fixed on Damian. Nearly a month of build up tension serged behind him. “This is between me and the brat.”

 

“Yes, Drake, please do.” Damian also got to his feet. “Todd obviously has a problem with me.”

 

“No, I have a problem with you  _ not being safe, _ you little shit.”

 

“I can take care of myself.”

 

“You’re 12 years old, no one expects you to take care of yourself, Dami, we’re all here—”

 

“I never asked for you to—”

 

_ “Tim!” _ Dick’s voice, high, panicked and terrified, rang through the cave, as did the clang of metal on stone as he dropped whatever tool he had been holding and broke into a sprint. “Tim, Timmy, what are you doing,  _ stop.” _

 

Jason and Damian turned. 

 

Tim’s eyes had gone glassy—he stared into the middle distance, unfocused, something fundamental missing from his gaze, but calm as anything. With an unshaking hand, he was holding the razor-sharp point of a bat-a-rang to the vulnerable curve of his own jugular. 

 

Dick nearly side-tackled him, looped his arms around his brother’s arms, tried to force him to lower the blade. Tim barely moved, twiched the bat-a-rang towards his neck. Dick shoved his own hand into the space between hand and weapon; it nicked skin and drew blood, but it did not part Tim’s artery and that was the important part, because even now Tim was struggling to move enough to try again, robotic as something unliving—

 

_ “Damian!”  _ Dick’s voice broke and shock Damian out of his frozen stupor, where his mind had been reeling to try to figure out what on earth was happening, and suddenly something clicked.

 

_ “Fuck off and die, Timmy.” _

 

_ “Yes, Drake, please do.” _

 

Damian felt vomit raise in his throat, but instead of retching, he forced himself to speak.

 

“Drake,” he said, choked and horse, “Timothy,  _ stop.” _

 

The bat-a-rang hit the floor with a muffled little  _ clink. _ Tim’s knees followed soon after, his gasping inhales strong enough that they must be hurting his throat. Dick followed him to the ground, restraining arms changed to embracing ones, his face paper-white and drawn. 

 

For a long minute, the only sound was Tim’s desperate pulls at the air. Dick held him, Jason stood, frozen, and Damian slowly lost what color he still had. 

 

He swayed on his feet, half sobbed, then turned on his heel and ran. 

 

Jason reached for him a second too late. “Damian, wait.” He moved as if to follow him. 

 

“No.” 

 

Dick and Jason’s attention snapped to Tim, whose voice was scratchy but resolute. 

 

“I’m going after him,” Tim said. 

 

Dick opened his mouth as if to protest, but Tim shrugged away his embracing arms and struggled to his feet. 

 

“I’m going after him,” he repeated, and did just that. 

 

In his wake, Dick and Jason stared at each other, twin looks of helplessness on their faces. 

 

.

Tim found Damian curled up in the back of one of the many empty closets of Wayne Manor. A fact about Damian Wayne that few knew: he always felt safest in small, enclosed places. 

 

Tim sat against the wall next to him and said nothing. The kid had his face burried in his knees, and his shoulders hitched every few seconds. He was rocking himself back and forth, just a little bit. 

 

He looked so young it hurt. 

 

Tim let the silence hang for a few seconds. Damian broke it. 

 

“If I kill you, Drake,” he said, voice think, not looking up, “it will be honorably. I will best you in combat. We would face each other on equal ground.”

 

Tim said, “I know.”

 

“I would never...never make you k-k-kill—” Damian half-whimpered, as if vocalizing it hurt him. “There’s no honor in that, there’s no—”

 

“Damian,” Tim said, “Damian, I know.” He slowly lifted his arm and laid it over Damian’s shoulders. His over-large sleeve rode up slightly, and in the dimness of the closet the Binding runes seemed to glow in their blackness. 

 

Damian turned his head, saw the runes, and burst into tears. 

 

“H-How,” he half-sobbed, “H-How can you even look at me? After what I just did, with what I can do to you? How can you st-stand to look at me or touch me or—”

 

“It wasn’t your fault.” Tim interrupted, shockingly loud in the small space. “Jesus, Damian, I know it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask for this.  _ I _ forced this situation on  _ you, _ I should be apologizing, fuck, I’m so sorry I dragged you into this. You’re as much of a victim here as I am.” 

 

Damian’s sobs quieted, but didn’t stop. He stared ahead of him, at the half-closed closet door, shaking. 

 

When he next spoke, it was quiet, as if he was disclosing something. “I keep thinking,” Damian swallowed thickly, continued in a voice that was unbelievably small, “I keep thinking about what my Grandfather was going to do to you.”

 

And Tim didn’t say anything to that, because he couldn’t think of anything to say. It was easy to draw the proper conclusions, when they had both seen the effects of the Binding, both felt the call of it under their own skin. The need for contact and proximity it demanded, the implanted drag under Tim’s skin to submit, under Damian’s to dominate. 

 

Tim didn’t know what to say to a 12-year-old who just realized that his Grandfather was planning to rape his adopted brother, after robbing him of Will. 

 

“Me too,” Tim said, voice nearly breaking. “But he doesn’t have me, so he won’t have the chance. I’m safe, Damian. You’re keeping me safe.”

 

Damian’s hand drifted to the opposite forearm, where his own line of runes ran from the tip of his middle finger to the crook of his elbow. He squeezed as if he could squeezed them out of him. Tim’s eyes fell to the circle on his wrists once again. 

 

He wished he could say something more reassuring, but he had nothing in him that could say it. He couldn’t assure him that they would break the Binding, because they weren’t sure it was possible. He couldn’t say that everything would be alright, because he didn’t know if it would be.

 

Damian’s grip on his own arm tightened like a vice. “Drake,” he said, eyes shutting and tears leaking out of them once again, “Timothy, I don’t want you to be a slave.” 

 

Something in Tim’s heart, barely being held together as it was, broke into tiny pieces. He wrenched Damian over so that he was sitting sideways on his lap, wrapped his arms around him, and held. Damian didn’t struggle. He pushed his forehead to the place right above Tim’s heart. 

 

“I don’t want you to be one either, Damian,” Tim said, and felt his own eyes burn. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a little concerned about my Damian characterization, but I figure it's a traumatic enough situation to justify it. I hope you enjoyed this rumination on Mutually Fucked Up and Mutually Non-Consensual Power Dynamics, one of my favorite things to explore. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, drop a review if you'd like, and have a great day!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] With Our Shadows Twisted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14699262) by [ghostwriterofthemachine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostwriterofthemachine/pseuds/ghostwriterofthemachine), [Solemini (SoleminiSanction)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoleminiSanction/pseuds/Solemini)




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